Robert Cailliau

“At one point, CERN was toying with patenting the World Wide Web.”

“Since the web is totally worldwide, we need a set of behavioural rules, laws they are commonly called, that are accepted worldwide. There is a big difference as to how things are treated in the U.S. and Europe and Asia.”

“We mustn't forget we chose the name 'WWW' before there was even one line of code written. We could do that because the Internet as an infrastructure was already there.”

“If I sign up for Facebook and want my account destroyed, it is impossible. They keep tabs on you; there will always be a trace.”

“I'm not on Twitter, nor Facebook, or LinkedIn, or any of these systems, because they suck in your soul and they will not let you go. Try to get out of any of them, and you will see. They are just like some religions where apostasy is punished by death.”

“If you operate a TV or radio station, you have to have a license. It has nothing to do with fundamental freedom. It has to do with protection of the average citizen against abuses.”

“There was a time when the community that was on the Net was homogenous and civilized. Now it's not. We're in the middle of chaos. It may calm down. But the alternative is that there's a total meltdown of the system and that it becomes unusable. That would be a catastrophe.”

“The Web is actually a coming together of three technologies, if you like: the hypertext, the personal computer, and the network. So, the network we had, and the personal computers were there, but people didn't use them, because they didn't know what to use them for, except maybe for a few games.”

“The forced influence of advertising has given us completely useless TV. You don't want that on the Net. But most on-line information providers need to attract advertising - which slows download times and clutters the screen with windows.”

“I'd like the reader to decide if he is willing to pay minute sums for content. I'd like the economics of web to be controlled between authors and readers, not advertiser.”

“When we have all data online it will be great for humanity. It is a prerequisite to solving many problems that humankind faces.”

“Because I'm a synesthete I see characters in colors and I perceive a W as green.”

“To me, the biggest surprise is that Google still functions despite the explosion in the number of sites.”

“What is hypertext? It is a method of giving a text more depth, structuring it, and letting the computer help you explore it. Links, like we know today - you see some blue underlined word and you click on it and it takes you somewhere else. That's the simplest definition of hypertext.”